Serita Foster was charged with disorderly conduct outside the library in October. Channel 2s Tom Jones went to the DeKalb County Courthouse, where she asked a judge to drop the charges Wednesday, but she declined.
Decatur police said they were asked to escort Foster off library property because her 14-month-old son was being loud and disruptive, but Foster said she wasnt. Both sides agree that she complained about her ejection outside, but she doesnt believe she went too far.
“The officer has no legal basis in arresting her for exercising her first amendment right in saying this isn’t right,” Foster’s attorney, Mawuli Davis, told Jones.
Prosecutors said her arrest had nothing to do with her child but instead, because she was using profanity outside the library.
The arresting officer, Sgt. R. Beaupierre, testified he had no choice but to handcuff her with the language she was using and the volume in which it was occurring.”
Foster said she wasn’t cursing, and her mother took the stand to back her up.
“She didn’t use no curse words. She said, They threw me out the library because my baby made a noise,” Lisa Stargell-Foster said.
Foster’s mother said, in fact, Beaupierre was the one out of control, “like a Dallas Cowboy. She said he hit her daughter and knocked her down, but he denied that.
She was upright,” Beaupierre said.
The judge said she couldn’t dismiss the charges because both sides listened to an audio recording of Foster’s arrest and still couldn’t agree on whether she used profanity.
Foster said she just wants to put the incident behind her.
